The Shortlist

Every teacher that I know dreads looking at the calendar and realizing that it is almost the end of summer. For me, the beginning of August marks the beginning of crunch time. Classrooms need to be set up, lesson plans put in place, and beginning-of-the-year meetings scheduled. I start having nightmares about the first day of school (yes, teachers get nervous, too!), and try very hard to put myself on a regular sleeping schedule.

This school year will mark the beginning of something new. I’ll be at a different school this year, still teaching middle school but only to seventh graders. I left my old school of six years in order to be closer to my daughter. This new school is only five minutes from my house – three if all the lights are green. I won’t have to cross the bridge (good-bye $5 toll) or sit in afternoon traffic. That’s an hour extra every day that I get to spend with my babygirl, precious minutes with someone who is already growing up too fast.

[I asked her to smile for the camera. Then I told her we were leaving and that she had to get out of the chair. What a diva.]

I’ve naturally been doing lots of research in order to prepare for next school year, especially because I will be teaching two subjects I haven’t taught for a while now: Social Studies & Literature. I feel like a brand new teacher. Not in a good way…but in a I-want-to-do-it-all-but-don’t-know-where-to-start kind of way. There’s so much information on the internet nowadays that it’s almost information overload! I’ve been writing stuff down, printing tons of resources, and pinning like a madwoman. Today I spent over an hour searching for “round robin reading alternatives” when I suddenly realized 2 things:

The baby is going to wake up soon.

How much of this am I actually going to use?

Hands up if you feel me on #2! I’ve always been the type to be so gung-ho about something, gather everything I need to get started, and never start. Or worse, start and never finish. It’s actually something that I’ve been working on to change about myself. I could sit and google for hours about the latest teaching techniques, behavior management tips, or the Common Core (dun dun dun), but it won’t make any difference if I don’t put any of it into play. So, what I have decided to do is get a nice short list of ideas going of things I would like to do differently in my classroom this year and make it a goal to try them out. Once I’ve exhausted the list, or if I’m in the need a little more inspiration, I’ll get back on the computer and google away. In case you were curious, here’s my list for the 2013-2014 school year.